Effective Teacher Selection

Growing enrollments, pending retirements, and educational reform initiatives have given rise to an increasing demand for teachers in the nation's public schools, while the supply of teachers has been declining. This study examined teacher selection procedures in six school districts to determine how teacher selection can be used to improve the quality of the teaching force. Among its findings the study concludes that (1) tight coupling between recruitment and hiring decisions promotes more effective teacher selection; (2) operational definitions of the "good teacher" vary across and within school districts; (3) a school district's treatment of candidates during the selection process may cause some teachers to screen themselves into or out of the applicant pool; (4) the process and logistics of teacher hiring may have at least as much influence on staff quality as do formal screening mechanisms; (5) initial hiring processes screen candidates on the basis of qualifications, and later hiring processes screen on the basis of the vacancy's characteristics; (6) policies often result in the placement of beginning teachers in the least attractive schools; and (7) beginning teachers value supervised induction, which enhances their feelings of efficacy and reported propensity to remain in teaching.